Tuesday, 6 April 2010

C A S T A W A Y S

Fiji is actually made up of over 30 islands, and one of these was the setting for the Tom Hanks film 'Castaway'. We decided that a trip to the Island otherwise known as Mordriki was in order. We had to board a large vessel to take us to one island to change onto a sail boat to continue the voyage to Mordriki. The Islands we saw along the way are all part of the Mamanuca group, and if you envision paradise this was it. Beautiful Islands where you wouldn't mind being shipwrecked. I tend to get sea sick on boats and this wasn't an exception, sailing is not the smoothest ride. We anchored around 200 metres from Mordriki grabbed our snorkel gear and swam to shore, we saw the rocks where Tom Hanks first got washed up, the cliff top where he tried to commit suicide, the beach where he wrote SOS (it now says castaway). We snorkeled off the beach and saw some beautiful fish,the sea was so clear you could have seen the coral from above the water. The sun was hot and the water cool. After Lunch we sailed to another island to meet the locals that call the place home, we had a traditionally Fijian welcoming ceremony with the chief of the village, we then looked around the market they had prepared for us. The Island had been hit by a cyclone not that long before and they were still in the process of repairing it, you could see the damage that had been done, where the trees had been torn down. It's a self sufficient island so they work together to make island life work. There was also a boarding school on the beach front for the children from this Island along with the neighbouring islands. The views from their shacks on the beach was phenomenal, the life they lead is very different to the life we know. It is simpler life; they aren't caught up in the world where your career establishes who you are, or your measured by what you own. They work as a team to create a community and for that they get the most stunning scenery around.